Luck

Yipee! I'm doing it! I've got a publishing deal, and regular work off the Dandy!
I always wanted to draw for Nutty comic since I was 10.
Nutty comic doesn't exist anymore so Dandy is the next best thing.
So I'm living the dream, and "the dream" feels almost exactly the same as the life I had before the dream began.
I haven't had any sort of raise or cost of living increase at my normal job for a few years now, not because they're "baddies" but, well, you've seen the economy. You know it's in the toilet so it's awesome that I've got a job at all.
The extra cartooning work would have meant I was on easy street about 6 or 7 years back. Now it means that I can pay off the work on my f**kin' chimney! I honestly have no idea what the hell I would have done without that money... No still can't think of how that would have been sorted.

I'm lucky I guess.

So how do you get stuff like jobs in the Dandy and publishing things, or anything else?
Is it hard work?
Being really awesome?
Getting good grades at school?

No. I'm pretty sure some work harder than me. I'm sure there are people better at writing and drawing than me, and my grades were very, very average.

It's luck.
I was working for a company that had a toy range called the bogies, the Bosses sorted out an ad thing for them in a comic, but didn't want it to be just a lame ad and thought a comic strip in a comic would be better, they knew I could draw so asked me to give it a go. (I was hired to make exhibition stands and vac form tools).
Then when the Dandy did their fantastic re-vamp they knew I could do the biz and asked me to do more. Yes! But not really down to me. Lucky to be working for a company that had a new toy coming out, and lucky to be around when they needed me to do more.

And with the publishing thing I was doing this blog and posting my rejections too when someone left a comment saying that blank slate might like my stuff (I think it was Garen Ewing).
I hadn't heard of them, because they were new, and because they were new they were looking for new artists.Luck!

There's no justice. No reward for hard work, by that I mean the reward is not automatic, some are rewarded while other aren't. Random shit just happens.

On the other side of the luck thing...
They listen to your heart every now and again. Doctors I mean. I'm 39 and she seemed like a girl. I had an appointment at the hospital for a vasectomy. I wasn't there for that, just a check before they do. She listened. Smiled at me, and then listened again... Then went to get someone else to listen. A while later she came back with an older guy. The older guy listened. He was less smiley.
He looked back at her nodded and said "Yup." Then Back at me. "Sound like you've got a bit of a murmur there, so we're going to put you in for a heart scan, just to check it out."
"When will that be?" I asked, knowing the NHS it would be in about 3 to 6 months.
"We're going to do it now."

If the NHS does something straight away alarm bells ring.

Turns out I have Mitral valve prolapse? Instead of closing properly, the valve swings both ways like a saloon door letting "the bad blood" back up the wrong way... Or something.

Humm, right. When they told me, and when (two years later) they said it was worse and I'd need heart surgery (in a few years) It didn't go in properly.
I think I actually thought that it wasn't true because it wasn't fair. I already had my thing wrong with me. The palindromic arthritis. I can't have two things (3 if you count the being bald thing) wrong with me.



The world throws a lot of stuff at us. Half of it's luck and half of it's shit. It's just down to where you're standing what you get hit with, I guess.